Saturday, June 15, 2013

Ripe Bananas plaguing you?

Bananas are among Marash Girl's earliest memories: bananas ripening in a beautiful bowl, a bowl that had been a wedding gift to her parents, and ripening faster than anyone could eat them. Early on, she didn't realize that her mother, better known as Grandma Jennie, was deliberate in her purchase of more bananas than the family could possibly eat in a week. Grandma Jennie would return to the grocery store regularly and, yes, buy more bananas. . . so what happened to those blackening bananas? Read on or scroll down.

Grandpa Peter's earliest memories of bananas came after his escape from the Armenian Genocide (1915-1922), when he arrived on the shores of the United States and caught his first sight of a bunch of bananas on the wharf in the harbor of New York City: "I was fascinated," he would relate, "by the sight of the largest woman I had ever seen eating a banana. She would eat one, then peel another, eat that one, and peel another, banana after banana, though I didn't know what she was eating, as I had never seen a banana before that day." Particularly poignant, since he had gone with very little to eat for years . . .

And then, throughout Marash Girl's childhood, she would hear her dad sing, with laughter in his voice, after eyeing the big bowl of bananas on the dining room buffet,

Yes we have no bananas
We have no bananas today
We have string beans and onions
Cabbages and scallions
And all kinds of fruit, and say

We have an old fashioned tomato
A Long Island potato
But yes we have no bananas
We have no bananas today

Yes we have no bananas
We have no bananas today
We have string beans and onions
Cabbages and scallions
And all kinds of fruit, and say

We have an old fashioned tomato
A Long Island potato
But yes we have no bananas
We have no bananas today

So what do you do with a ripe banana (or a drunken sailor, for that matter), or a whole bowl full of ripe bananas? Most women of today would answer, "You freeze them!" After, of course, peeling them! But Marash Girl's mother, Grandma Jennie, would wait until those bananas were good and black, and then make the most delicious banana bread anyone had ever tasted! And that was her secret. Over-ripe bananas. You, too can make the most delicious banana bread anyone has ever tasted -- just grab the recipe for "Grandma's Banana Bread" from the internet, take those over ripe bananas, either from your kitchen counter or from your freezer, and use them in your recipe of choice for banana bread. Oh, and don't forget to add real vanilla flavoring, whether or not the recipe calls for it. (Sometimes Marash Girl substitutes "strawberry yogurt" for the sour milk called for in the recipe.)

But if it's summer, as hopefully it will be soon, and you don't want to heat up the kitchen by turning on the oven, there are other possibilities for those ripe bananas sitting in your freezer. One, of course, is making a milk shake with a frozen banana and a glass of milk blended up in your blender (with a dash of real vanilla for a special treat). Try it at four in the afternoon when you're ready for a break and a treat! And more recently, a mother told me how she prepares ice cream for her kids without worrying about the calories. "I freeze up ripe bananas, too, but before freezing them, I peel them, slice them and throw them in baggies in the freezer. Then, when my kids want ice cream, I throw the frozen sliced bananas in the cuisinart and and blend them up until they're the consistency of sherbet, and the kids love their banana ice cream!" Marash Girl hasn't tried this yet, but when she does, she's going to throw a few frozen strawberries in the mix, and, of course, add her favorite ingredient, real vanilla flavoring!